Apple granted trademark protections for the interior of the Apple Store

It probably won't help against competitors that use similar designs, though.

Apple has successfully secured a trademark for the design of its retail stores. Trademark protection was applied for in 2010 and granted last week according to documents filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Apple's stores are meticulously designed down to the last detail, including special architectural glass panels (patent pending), floating glass staircases (patented), stainless steel exteriors, and even the lightly colored birch tables on which the arrays of demo iPads and MacBook Pros sit, waiting to be poked and prodded by customers.

Apple has gone to great lengths to protect the designs of its iPhones, iPads, and other products, so it's little surprise that the company wants to extend that protection to the interior design of the Apple Store.

Last year the Chinese government shut down a fake Apple Store in China that seemed so real even the employees thought they were working for Apple.

As noted by Reuters, there is precedent for protecting unique interior designs of retail establishments. The Supreme Court granted similar protection to a chain of Mexican restaurants in 1992.

How the trademark might affect Apple competitors like Microsoft and Samsung, which have generously borrowed ideas from Apple's Store designs, is unclear. Suing a competitor for infringing on an entire store's trade dress would probably be of dubious value to Apple, according to Ars' Tech Policy Editor Joe Mullin. The true test of a possible infringement claim is whether or not customers were duped into thinking they were in a real Apple Store, and the prominent non-Apple logos would probably suffice to survive such a claim.

Enlarge/ This Samsung store that opened in Australia last year bears a striking resemblance to Apple's store designs.

Though the trademark only gives Apple trade dress protection in the US, securing the trademark could be useful in garnering similar protection in other countries in order to help stop the kind of fake stores that popped up in China.

Promoted Comments

Well I was going to try to get in before people completely overreacted, but oh well. Here's the entirety of the trademark.

Quote:

The mark consists of the design and layout of a retail store. The store features a clear glass storefront surrounded by a paneled facade consisting of large, rectangular horizontal panels over the top of the glass front, and two narrower panels stacked on either side of the storefront. Within the store, rectangular recessed lighting units traverse the length of the store's ceiling. There are cantilevered shelves below recessed display spaces along the side walls, and rectangular tables arranged in a line in the middle of the store parallel to the walls and extending from the storefront to the back of the store. There is multi-tiered shelving along the side walls, and a oblong table with stools located at the back of the store, set below video screens flush mounted on the back wall. The walls, floors, lighting, and other fixtures appear in dotted lines and are not claimed as individual features of the mark; however, the placement of the various items are considered to be part of the overall mark.

Note that you pretty much have to copy most of this description to be in violation. It's not like Apple claims to have trademarked the wooden table. If you've done all of the things above, you've pretty much copied an Apple Store.

62 Reader Comments

Dafuq? Sorry to Apple, but that looks like stores around the world from all kinds of companies from Tokyo to Berlin. What if Apple decides that they look to much like the Apple Store? Will they then sue them all?

Possibly. It's not clear if an infringement of trade dress of a store design has ever been argued in court. Other stores are welcome to skirt right up to the line, though, as long as they don't cross it.

As we noted in the article, though, the bar for trade dress is typically whether or not a store "confuses" or "tricks" a consumer into thinking it's really an Apple Store. As we noted, a lawsuit in most circumstances is probably unlikely. But for stores like those that got shut down in China last year, Apple would have a clear cut case.

I'm not concerned about the difficulty this imposes on other stores that may now have to change their designs. The trouble is with the precedent it sets. If Apple can do this, then any company can do the same with their own store layout and we could get a situation where there's no way to lay out a store without stepping on somebody's trademark.

If you copy an apple store point by point, except for deceiving people into thinking it's actually an apple store, how exactly does apple suffer? this is not only a useless patent, it's a bad patent. there's no reason apple should be able to put this constraint on others. imitation, in this sense, is a form of flattery, not trademark infringement!

It's not a patent. It's a trademark. Trademarks are not supposed to be useful except in helping customers identify what product you are selling.

Why is a picture of the Australian Samsung store there? Is it troll-bait?

Even if the patent was in Australia, I don't think it would classify as an infringement as those patents are VERY specific.

Sure, some customers might not be able to tell the difference, but then again, they probably can't differentiate between television sets either. Heck, I know people that can't even differentiate between different cars, if both cars are red.

The only protection Apple stores need in China is to control the crowds trying to get in during product introductions and weekends because there are too few Apple stores in China, pretty much forcing retailers to replicate the experience consumers want. And they are selling Apple products, so what's the problem?

China is now Apple's 2nd largest market but has fewer stores in fewer cities than some states in the US.

Granted Apple has finally seen the light and is working on more store openings, but do you think 7 stores is enough to cover a country the approximate size of the USA, particularly when 6 of the stores are in two cities (Shanghai and Beijing)?

On a serious note. Is the US Law code so devoid of protection instruments against illegitimate business representation that Apple must go to these lengths to protect its business?

I would certainly hope so but there's no harm in trying for defense in depth, particularly as trademarks are pretty cheap to get. With that said, I agree with the article in that I'm not sure how much use this will be to Apple.

Protecting your business with a registered trademark can be comparatively straightforward compared to relying on other areas of law. As a gross oversimplification, if your competitor is judged to be using a trademark that is confusingly similar to a trademark that you are already using, then you can prevent them from using it. The legal test just becomes a comparison of the two marks. No need to prove copying, harm to your competitor etc. etc.

Other legal tests are more complicated, making your case harder to prove. See passing off for example.

As the article points out, this trademark is only likely to be much use against direct copies of the Apple store layout, since consumers are unlikely to be confused by the differences between a trademarked Apple store and a similarly laid out store operated by another company.

If you copy an apple store point by point, except for deceiving people into thinking it's actually an apple store, how exactly does apple suffer? this is not only a useless patent, it's a bad patent. there's no reason apple should be able to put this constraint on others. imitation, in this sense, is a form of flattery, not trademark infringement!

Because like so many other things, Apple, or any company that files for a trademark or patent, usually spends quite a bit of resources developing them.

Flattery or not, others who copy and infringe on such, are getting to use ideas that they did not develop or invest in, yet get to reap the benefits.

Its funny that so many people hate Apple for protecting their IP, but have no issues when other do the same thing.

Except that apple copied the layout of almost every cellphone store, shoe store, or many Women's clothing stores that were ever in a mall, glass front framed by non glass rectangular shapes such as Oh I don't know the dividing walls between stores and the roof, and then products on the outside walls in recesses with shelves or hooks beneath and an open display floor with tables( aka Display stands).

If you copy an apple store point by point, except for deceiving people into thinking it's actually an apple store, how exactly does apple suffer? this is not only a useless patent, it's a bad patent. there's no reason apple should be able to put this constraint on others. imitation, in this sense, is a form of flattery, not trademark infringement!

It is a trademark, not a patent. There are big differences between the two. Do not comment on things you do not comprehend.

Well I was going to try to get in before people completely overreacted, but oh well. Here's the entirety of the trademark.

Quote:

The mark consists of the design and layout of a retail store. The store features a clear glass storefront surrounded by a paneled facade consisting of large, rectangular horizontal panels over the top of the glass front, and two narrower panels stacked on either side of the storefront. Within the store, rectangular recessed lighting units traverse the length of the store's ceiling. There are cantilevered shelves below recessed display spaces along the side walls, and rectangular tables arranged in a line in the middle of the store parallel to the walls and extending from the storefront to the back of the store. There is multi-tiered shelving along the side walls, and a oblong table with stools located at the back of the store, set below video screens flush mounted on the back wall. The walls, floors, lighting, and other fixtures appear in dotted lines and are not claimed as individual features of the mark; however, the placement of the various items are considered to be part of the overall mark.

Note that you pretty much have to copy most of this description to be in violation. It's not like Apple claims to have trademarked the wooden table. If you've done all of the things above, you've pretty much copied an Apple Store.

Uh, except that, with the SOLE exception of those video screens flush mounted to the back wall, that is a description of a pretty large number of stores I have been in dating back to, oh, say... I dunno. A long time. I was going to say 2000, but then I realized that the above description sounds REMARKABLY like a BAR.

I can think of at least one gaming store that, minus the video displays, has looked like that since at least 2003, which means that the trademark shouldn't be granted because the design is generic. If you really think about it, how many layouts are more or less exactly this?

If you really think about it, how many layouts are more or less exactly this?

I can't think of a store I've seen ever, anywhere in the world that I would mistake for an Apple Store (presuming you stripped out branding and product, to make it a fair fight). Can you find a picture somewhere that would confuse someone? Or is this an "Apple patented the rectangle, herp derp!" kind of claim?

I don't know what Apple plans to do with the trademark. Maybe it's meant to just scare off other retailers from closely copying the design. But as the article notes, trademarking a store design is not without precedent.

I'm guessing they're doing this to remind consumers that they're so iconic, they can trademark their look. And then as a bonus, any time you look at something that's like an Apple store (TM!), you can remind yourself that it's a knockoff and denegrate Apple's competitors yourself.

Bit of cheap advertising, something along the lines of the Volkswagen adverts that have various drivers and salesmen describing cars as "like a Golf".

If you really think about it, how many layouts are more or less exactly this?

I can't think of a store I've seen ever, anywhere in the world that I would mistake for an Apple Store (presuming you stripped out branding and product, to make it a fair fight). Can you find a picture somewhere that would confuse someone? Or is this an "Apple patented the rectangle, herp derp!" kind of claim?

I was referring to the trademark (quoted above), but yes, actually, I've seen lots of stores that are like that. Maybe its a Northwest thing, or a Oregon thing? Though I've seen stores like it in Tennessee as well, circa 2003. Honestly the store looks terribly generic; its only the starkness that really marks it out as being something different, and even THEN the gaming store I mentioned in my aforementioned post looks VERY similar to that. The tables were there to run tournaments on, they had shelving along the walls, it was all very stark. The only real difference was that there was a counter in the back and a counter along the right-hand wall looking in from the front. It was similarly stark. Nice place to shop too, as well as to game.

Admittedly there were -chairs- for the tables. Still, very similar looking to me.

Does anyone else see a problem with the perspective of that diagram? (Look up the art term before you respond) Is Apple going to charge admission to enter its fun houses?

QuattroV wrote:

Get out your three-legged tables, retail outlets everywhere!

I know you're saying this to be funny, but a better idea would be to go retro modern and use cubes! Although you would probably want to put a top on the cubes so it extends out some so people wouldn't have to lean over to try the demo units. Plus, you don't have to sweep under cubes on a nightly basis. (I know it's easy to sweep under tables when there are no chairs to deal with, but not having to sweep under cubes is much easier still!)